Gallipoli

Gallipoli Lyrics

And it changed everything you know
How we were and the wonders we love
Southern land, scattered clouds from the cove
And, oh, oh, oh, oh, spare me the glow

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About “Gallipoli”

“Gallipoli” is the title-track off Beirut’s fifth studio album.

The song was released on October 22, 2018 and is named after the Southern Italian town where Condon wrote the title track.

What have the artists said about the song?

We stumbled into a medieval-fortressed island town of Gallipoli one night and followed a brass band procession fronted by priests carrying a statue of the town’s saint through the winding narrow streets behind what seemed like the entire town, before returning late to Sudestudio. The next day I wrote the song I ended up calling “Gallipoli” entirely in one sitting, pausing only to eat. I eventually dragged Nick [Petree] and Paul [Collins] in to add some percussion and bass around midnight after a trance-like ten hours of writing and playing. I was quite pleased with the result. It felt to me like a cathartic mix of all the old and new records and seemed to return me to the old joys of music as a visceral experience. This seemed to be the guiding logic behind much of the album, of which I only realized fully at that point.
— Zachary Condon on the writing process of “Gallipoli”.

What does the word "Gallipoli" mean?

Gallipoli is a southern Italian town and comune in the province of Lecce, in Apulia.